He gives it special attention because, as he notes, its significance in the whole
scheme of revelation through the ages, and in relation to the progress of human
thought, has not been as thoroughly explored in the New Church as the Old
Testament and the more extensive exposition of it in the Writings.
He shows how the New Testament is an intermediate between the sensual
style of the Old Testament and the rational style of the Heavenly Doctrines,
and what an essential use that intermediate revelation serves.
“The Heavenly Doctrines,” Mr. Rogers observes, “speak less of the
intermediates within any one heaven than of its exteriors or interiors. They
deal much more with the Old Testament and the Heavenly Doctrines, both
explicitly and implicitly, than with the New Testament. They also deal much
less with the imaginative level of the mind than with either the sensuous or the
rational level.” (p. 167) He goes on to explore the connection between the levels
of the natural sense, the levels of the natural mind, and the three revelations.
The New Testament draws from the sensuous qualities of the Old
Testament (in which concrete, natural things represent spiritual qualities) but
throws an interior light onto them from a more internal perspective. In so
doing, it especially appeals to the imaginative level of the natural mind, which
stands between the exterior, sensual level (the focus of the Old Testament) and
the interior, rational level (to which the Writings are addressed).
The three kinds of revelation we have in the triune Word are accommodated
to the three levels of the natural mind. Each one, then, also has a special appeal
to people of different ages (and stages of mental development): the